Fianna Fail Cork City Cllr Tony Fitzgerald, a member of the healthy
city network in Cork said that the ecowell conference in Cork City
Hall today is another positive step in promoting cork as a healthy
city and a European leader on healthy living initiates for all its
citizens.

“Our focus here in Cork is to have our city a healthy place to live,
work and visit.

We must continue the strong partnerships between the universities,
HSE, City Council and local communities he said and The Niche
Knocknaheeny community health project is an example of local
communities taking the lead in terms of community health at local
level.

This is a worldwide, national and local agenda and Cork is an
European Leader in this field, said Cllr Fitzgerald. We must ensure
that the political will at Council is top of our agenda. There are
many examples whereby the city can be proud of in terms of Community
Health Planning, a Healthy City Status under our City Development Plan
and the recent Regeneration Projects which commenced in 2010.

Its great to see so many delegates from various countries visiting our
city and the positive feed back today is very encouraging.

We can be proud of our status as a Healthy City by the World Health
Organization and when you look at our litter campaigns, city marathon,
health promotion programmes, Health Action Programmes, public walks,
sports facilities and partnerships, Discovery Exhibition and Ocean to
sea, it just proves how aware we are of a healthy living programme for
Cork people.

Recent interest in allotments and community gardens proves that local
people want to get involved and enjoy good food produced locally in
the community and contribute to our status as a Healthy City.